


Quietly,

by Beabaseball (beabaseball)



Series: Aitsumu for Aitsumu's Sake [2]
Category: Kill la Kill
Genre: DTR, Gen, M/M, Mecha, Other, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-31 18:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3988369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beabaseball/pseuds/Beabaseball
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of stories about Aikuro and Tsumugu as a couple, taken from prompts on tumblr. Requests welcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Strikhedonia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strikhedonia - The pleasure of being able to say “to hell with it”.

It’s on their third day of no sleep that Aikuro finally loses it.

“I’m building a mecha.”

Tsumugu was also on his third day of no sleep  _and_ fourth can of beer, and assumed he’d misheard. Three days in the lab, testing weapons and rapidly learning the finer points of obsessive tinkering. He could no longer feel his eyeballs. “You’re whating a what?”

“A mecha,” Aikuro said, slamming his hands down on the nearest table and then sliding them towards Tsumugu. Then laying down on the table. Then sliding his whole body towards Tsumugu. “I am going to build a mecha. And it’s going to have chicken legs. And be bright blue. And fire missiles.”

“What the fuck, dude,” Tsumugu said. “Can  _I_ have one?”

“ _Absolutely_.”

“What are you two hoodlums doing now?”

Tsumugu whipped around to face the speaker. Aikuro sort of waffled.

Dr. Matoi snuffled and scratched his moustache disapprovingly, glaring at them with his single eye and repeated his question. “I  _said,_ what ware you two hoodlums up to?”

“I’m going to build a mecha,” Aikuro said, still waffling a bit, his shirt slowly defecting because of it. His shoulders were already freed. “And you can’t stop me.”

Dr. Matoi grunted, narrowing his single eye. “How big of a mecha?”

“A  _huge_ mecha.”

“Oh? On  _our_ budget?”

After a long moment of staring at each other, Dr. Matoi nodded once and left the room, his point having been made. The hope in Aikuro’s eyes had died.

“I can’t build my mecha…”

Aikuro stopped even trying to move around on the desk. He just lay on it with his shirt half off and his arms at his side, like a particularly sad fish. Tsumugu sat down beside him on the edge of the table and ran a hand through Aikuro’s hair. 

It did very little to calm him. Three days of no sleep had sent Aikuro straight from his high down to enough of a low that Tsumugu was pretty sure he was about to cry, and if Aikuro cried, Tsumugu would probably end up crying, since Aikuro’s sadness was contagious especially after three days of sleep deprivation and four beers. The excitement of getting a mecha had sucked out all the remaining energy he had.

“Hey, hey… it’ll be okay.”

Aikuro shook his head, definitely about to cry. “The world’s going to end, and I have to be a fiscally responsible adult.”

Tsumugu nodded, “That is… definitely one way to put it.”

Aikuro nodded back. He moved just enough to shove his face downward on the desk onto a pile of papers and let out a miserable groan.

“Hey,” Tsumugu said. “I have an idea.”

Aikuro sniffled. When he lifted his face again, one of the papers, clinging onto his damp cheek. “What?”

“What if I robbed a bank?”

000

Aikuro woke seventeen hours later. A seventeen hour nap had been very much needed, and though he was still very tired as he woke, he was also felt much more lucid and competent then when he’d first passed out on the breakroom couch.

He went to the bathroom. He debated a shower but decided he would just faint again unless he was hydrated and fed, first. A trip to the cafeteria fixed that. Then the shower. It was incredible how much better he felt after fixing up his hair.

Yet, as he walked towards the main laboratory, there was still something nagging at him, though he wasn’t sure if it was the lingering tiredness or if he had legitimately forgotten something very important—

—such as why there was a small mountain of bank notes on his desk.

Why was there a small mountain of bank notes on his desk?

Why was Dr. Matoi giving him that look.

Wh

000

“You robbed a bank for me,” Aikuro said, stunned.

“Pft,  _no_ ,” Tsumugu said, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. “I robbed a bank to get a mecha.”

“You robbed a bank for my mechas,” Aikuro said, no less stunned. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“Yeah, well,” Tsumugu coughed and rifled through his many pockets for a cigarette. Aikuro offered a light without comment. “Well, you know. There are two perfectly good explanations for this.”

“Oh?” Aikruo leaned on one elbow and smirked at Tsumugu.

“ _Yes_ ,” Tsumugu scowled and took a drag. “One: the world is ending. Who gives a fuck about a bank. Two: wipe that smirk off your face, asshole, who doesn’t want a giant robot?”

“Mhh, yes, yes, of course.” Aikuro nodded. “I have bad news, however.”

Tsumugu paused in his smoking.

“You are wonderful and talented, Tsumugu,” Aikuro said. “But you have no idea how much the materials for these mechas will cost.”

“Are you telling me I have to go out and rob another bank, Aikuro?”

Aikuro shook his head. “I’m saying the mechas will only have legs at this point in time.”

“I’m not drunk and sleep deprived enough for this.”

“There isn’t even room for a cockpit. Or, maybe there’s room for a  _cock_ pit, but there isn’t enough room to put the rest of the body inside. We’ll have to be half sticking out. We will, very literally, be half-assed in this.”

“Aikuro, stop.”

“Fortunately, without arms getting in the way, there’s more places for missiles.”

“I swear to god, Aikuro.”

“Also, if I make two of them, we can fuse the mechas together to create arms in order to do battle, literally side-by-side. Close enough to touch. If the design didn’t require your arms to be trapped inside in order to operate the whole thing. But if I left your arms free, you may try to hit me, or hit them against the legs or something and have a hideously broken arm and be completely useless for the rest of the war. So your beautiful arms will be trapped inside for their own protection.”

“Aikuro, what the fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the result:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r8LifQNx0Y


	2. Tsumugu saves Aikuro's life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original request from momokairu: Tsumugu/Aikuro - Tsumugu saves Aikuro's life

By the time Aikuro could shout, it was already too late.

The red fabric snapped to his arm. He reached with his free hand to grab the knife he’d set on the table behind him but the second cut leaped up to snare his wrist, then his chest— “Fuck, oh fuck,  _oh fuck!_ ”  
  
By the third ‘fuck,’ Aikuro had the other lab tech’s attention, and the yard of cloth had snaked around his ribs.   
  
He could feel it  _bite_ as his first rib cracked—  
  
—and then there was air. Aikuro gasped, tumbling to the floor as the grip on his body loosened. He’d stayed on his feet the whole time, he realized. The only thing that had held him upright was the deadly grip on his spine. His head hit the floor with a crack, and he moaned, rolling onto his side.   
  
Blood from a million pinpricks welled up around his torso, and Tsumugu had left a deep gash in the life fiber fabric where he cut it from Aikuro’s arms. The knife Aikuro hadn’t managed to reach was in his hand, and he held the fiber down threateningly with its blade until the two lab techs arrived and wrangled the thing back into its container.   
  
Tsumugu abandoned the sheets of cloth to the technicians, leaning over Aikuro instead and briefly checking him over before worming an arm under his shoulders and shifting him to sit upright once more without jostling him very much.  
  
“Uuuhfuck,” Aikuro said. He weakly moved his arms to wrap around his torso. His blood had turned his white lab shirt a slowly darkening red. The arm that had been wrangled first moved much more unsteadily than the other. When he looked over he saw that not only was he bleeding from the bloodsucker on that arm, but a long narrow gash had split both his lab shirt and the skin beneath it.

“Sorry,” Tsumugu might have mumbled. He pressed the wound closed.

“We-we should probably get you a long range knife if we’re stuck doing thissa lot,” Aikuro said. His attempted smile felt lopsided. Tsumugu snorted and grimaced—smiled?—grimaced and put free hand on Aikuro’s head right where it throbbed most painfully from hitting the floor. Aikuro leaned into the touch, far more than happy to have pressure on his injuries.   
  
“I think you’ll have to wait a while before you can develop anything new,” Tsumugu said. “But yeah. You just daydream about that while we figure out how bad this concussion’s gonna be.”  
  
Aikuro nodded as slightly as he could and took deep breaths, trying to figure out through his throbbing and addled head if he was well enough to try and stand yet or if in the interest of preventing bloodloss, insist on being rushed painfully to a medical ward. But keeping his mind on that was hard. He kept being pulled back into the passive present of  _wow that’s a lot of red_ and, “Your hands are shaking.”  
  
Tsumugu scowled and said, “ _You’re_  shaking,” as he continued to shiver.  
  
Aikuro chuckled, stopped, and said, “Ow,” going limp once more.  
  
Finally, one of the lab techs arrived with a stretcher and pillow, and helped Tsumugu get Aikuro settled securely on it. The medical bay was not far from the labs and Aikuro’s wounds were largely superficial—but the bloody splotch on the floor of Aikuro’s work station kept the thought of how quickly they may have been worse in the forefront of their minds for a long time after.


	3. In Which Tsumugu Cares But Is Too Tsundere to Admit It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompted: Tsumugu doing something really sweet for Aikuro but being too tsundere to admit it  
> (or: three reasons why Tsumugu is not the one going undercover)

Tsumugu was not a chef. There was no shame in not being a chef! Make no mistake, he could fry like no one’s business, no problem. When it came to sweets and confections, though, he left it to the professionals at the grocery.   
  
He did, however, repackage the sweets so they  _appeared_  hand made. 

He was rarely ever there to see Aikuro’s reactions when discovering a plate full of cookies, or cream puffs, or small cakes on his desk, but Aikuro mentioned them, sometimes. Not by naming Tsumugu—the plates had no calling card or identification, and Tsumugu had certainly never thought he’d be using his knowledge of how to not leave DNA evidence to avoid being caught gifting sweets to a scientist, but—but every now and then, Aikuro would offhandedly mention that someone had left him a wonderful treat on the desk, and would you like one, Tsumugu?

No Aikuro. Shut up and eat your cookies.

000

Nudist Beach, did, despite popular belief, have a laundry room. It was mostly used for the hip and shoulder pouches, which got a little gross after tangling with goku uniforms or escaping crumbling buildings, but it was also used to clean the screened everyday clothes that agents put on while out beyond the safety of the base.

Aikuro, having no home outside of the base, probably used it the most. Suspiciously stained lab coats. Oxfords and ties for Honnouji. Black pants covered in dust and cat hair. Most socks than could be counted.

Aikuro was pretty good about getting them into the washer and dryer, but tended to forget about them past that. Running three divisions and being de facto leader meant meetings and experiments and running out to the bar late at night screeching about  _stupid scissors, can’t get the stupid scissors to work_  , all of which lead to the laundry sitting in the drying for about three days until Aikuro realized he was out of clothes and out have to rush to iron the newly-wrinkled shirts and hope his pants had successfully dried entirely at some point, and that nothing was even attempting to grow mold.

And when he burst into the laundry room, there were all his clothes, not one out of place (who in Nudist Beach would steal clothing?) . All dry. All ironed and folded, ready to be worn. Even the lab coats.

Generally, Tsumugu was the sort of person who said, “fuck the lab coats.”

But he folded them, anyway, and watched as Aikuro bolted out the docks and up the winding streets to Honnouji Academy.

000

Aikuro did need to sleep, no matter what anyone said.

No matter what Aikuro himself said. He had to sleep eventually. He had to take a moment to breathe.

Surely, Aikuro understood the basic limitations of a human being better than anyone else.

But finding him lying, passed out on the floor of the communal bathroom, it certainly didn’t appear that way. Not with the crumpled papers scattered around him. Not with ink all up his face. Not with the amount of coffee cans in the trash or the still-smoldering cigarette held dangerously loose between his fingers.

Tsumugu snuffed the cigarette, first. Checked Aikuro’s vitals and made sure it was just exhaustion, and not—not whatever else Aikuro was always on the verge of. He gathered up the papers, uncrinkling them getting them situated into a neat stack and slotting them under one of his shoulder straps, where they’d be kept secure while he figured out what to do with this dingus on the floor.

He wet a paper towel and tabbed it against the ink on Aikuro’s face. The ink came off, but Aikuro didn’t rouse.

It took some doing, but a few minutes later, Tsumugu had Aikuro in his arms and carried him through the halls of the bunker until they reached Aikuro’s door. Turning the handle was a bit of a challenge with both his arms filled up with exhausted scientist, but it did open. Unlocked. Typical poor planning.

Aikuro’s room was a mess, most likely because he treated it as a personal library more than a personal quarters. There were bookcases full of magazines, stacks of books, and two crates of scrap metal and a third full of alphabetized bolts, nestled beside a dirty clothes hamper, wardrobe, and toolchest. There was no window. A bunkbed was nestled to the left of the door, the wire mesh where the top mattress would usually rest replaced by a wooden plank and yet more piles of papers and cloth.

Grumbling, Tsumugu carried Aikuro to the bottom mattress and lay him down as best he could.

He was certain Aikuro groaned and shifted just a hair closer to awareness when he was laid down, but after a few long moments of stillness and silence, Aikuro was again fully asleep.

More confident, Tsumugu lifted Aikuro’s arms one by one and stripped away the labcoat. Then, Aikuro’s shoes, and socks. He left the rest, figuring there was nothing to be done for it. He disposed of the dirty clothes in a corner of the room and discovered a store of unopened water bottles, one of which he placed at Aikuro’s bedside table. The papers, he removed from his shoulder strap and weighted them down with a book.

Then, unsure of what else to do, he pulled the blankets up from the edge of the bed, tucked Aikuro in, and left.

All that was left now was to issue a  temporary order that should Aikuro be found awake within twelve hours, he was to be escorted right back to bed. If he should be found within twenty-four hours attempting to work, he should be strongly chided.

Twelve hours of sleep or twenty-four hours of rest wasn’t much.

Neither was leaving sweets, folding laundry, or tucking someone in to bed.

It wasn’t much, but it was what he could do, and from what Tsumugu had seen, even the little things helped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to dyrimthespeaker for helping me figure out what sort of things are sweet for people in love to do
> 
> prompts are always welcome


	4. Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsumugu confesses to Aikuro  
> (in the quietest way he can)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> requested by momokairu on tumblr

They arrived at Dr. Matoi’s wake, and they were silent. It was a very odd wake—the body wasn’t present at all, for one thing, having been taken by the authorities not long after Ryuko Matoi’s return—and all the attendees were nude. A silent consensus. Aikuro explained it as sort of a mental barrier. Clothes put all the recruits on edge, and besides, you don’t go to a wake with a murder-weapon lookalike, do you?

  
Also odd: the absence of a grieving family. No one to pay condolences to, as Matoi’s only daughter had run into the nighttime woods in pursuit of the killer. It was doubtful either would be found. The other closest person to pay condolences to would have been Aikuro himself, and Tsumugu by association, but considering Dr. Matoi’s interactions with them had by and large stopped at constructing and testing anti-Life Fiber weaponry and getting messily drunk in the kitchen—   
  
Still, the sudden loss of their leader sent a palpable ripple through Nudist Beach. They all stood a little closer that night, shuffling through a sparse room, watching a slideshow, sipping alcohol, feeling very odd and very vulnerable.   
  
“I guess you’re in charge now,” Tsumugu said, standing beside Aikuro, watching the screen flicker through photos of the late Dr. Matoi desperately trying to not be photographed. There were only a handful of images. The slides had repeated more than ten times in just the short time he’d been watching.   
  
“I guess I am,” said Aikuro. “I knew sneakily taking over the engineering division would come to bite me in the ass one day."   
  
Aikuro laughed. Tsumugu elbowed him in the ribs unkindly.   
  
"It’s not funny.”  
  
“It is, a little bit,” Aikuro said. “Not Dr. Matoi dying. Tsumugu. Don’t make that face, that’s not what I meant.”  
  
They fell quiet for a moment, listening to the sounds of the militia around them trying to pull up some story, some good memory of Dr. Matoi to share at his wake.   
  
“You know why they killed him, don’t you?” Tsumugu said. He reached down to his waist before recalling that his standard pouches weren’t there. He was cigaretteless. Not missing a beat, he turned and began walking towards the dormitories instead, signaling for Aikuro to follow. “Dr. Matoi?"   
  
"Mh?” Aikuro said, following along, pretty certain that bumming a cigarette off his friend would help carry him through the rest of this long night. “That’s confiden—”  
  
“They killed him because he was in charge. Not the scissor-blade, not whatever else that guy was doing. It was because he was in charge, and they knew losing the head would fuck us up until we could regroup,” Tsumugu said as they left the crowd of people behind and began to climb the stairs. “They weren’t counting on you being a quick second.”  
  
Aikuro snorted. “I will take that as a compliment! And yet, I couldn’t do this so smoothly without my dedicated Tsumugu at my side, isn’t that right?”   
  
Tsumugu batted at Aikuro’s head and tried to ignore the subsequent laughter. “Hey, fuck you. I’m being serious. You’re gonna be the next person they target and I won’t be able to follow your ass everywhere to keep you safe!”  
  
“I’ll be  _fine._ ” They reached the dorms. “Honestly, I’ve already been undercover at the school for months. If I’m assassinated, it will be because I’ve blown my cover, not because of anything else.”  
  
“Yeah, well, it sure makes it easier to blow your cover when you’re sending coded orders to a secret guerrilla sect, isn’t it?” Tsumugu reached his dorm and pushed the door open without any bother. He hadn’t locked his quarters before coming to the wake. Folded neatly on his bed was his shirt, vest, pants, underwear, ah, there, the pouch holder. He fished his box out in moments. “And if they come for you at the school, I might not be able to get there in time.”  
  
“Aw, worried about me?” Aikuro said, reaching over to snatch up a cigarette when it was offered. The lighter arrived a moment later.  
  
“Yeah, asshole,” Tsumugu said, lighting up as well. “I’m sort of really fucking done with the people I love dying."   
  
Aikuro paused with the cigarette hanging loosely between his fingers. “Oh?”   
  
He didn’t think he’d ever heard Tsumugu say that word before. A quick glance over revealed—  
  
Oh no. Oh no, Tsumugu was looking down at the floor like it’d broken someone.  
  
"Hey,” Aikuro said, reaching out and brushing the other’s shoulder to try and bring him back to the present. “I’m not going to die. And even if something did happen to me, there would still be others who care for you."   
  
"Yeah,” Tsumugu said, shrugging the hand off and taking a drag as though the conversation bored him. “Well, you’re sort of all I have left anymore, so maybe I’m being a little melodramatic.”  
  
“…Hey,” Aikuro said, his voice gentler. His hand dropped down and curled around Tsumugu’s fingers. The touch was not rejected this time. “I love you too."   
  
They stood together for what seemed like a few criminally short minutes, smoking and holding hands in relative silence. When their cigarettes ran down, they returned to the floors below, to the uncomfortable wake.   
  
All night, Tsumugu did not leave Aikuro’s side.


	5. where did they even find aikuro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, Tsumugu just sort of wonders about Aikuro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short thing I wrote that I had no real conclusion to but liked too much to get rid of. And seriously. What the fuck /is/ Aikuro??? Where did they even find this guy???

Sometimes, Tsumugu looks at Aikuro and wonders _Where did Mr. Matoi even_ find _this guy?_

It was funny, because most of the time, that was what people said about _Tsumugu_. Not very stealthily, he would add. Tsumugu wasn’t an eavesdropping kind of guy. If he wanted to know about it, he was liable to ask, not tip-toe around as subject or resort to the realm of weird, half-assed spying, which when squinted at looked an awful lot like betrayal of trust.

So if he knew about the confused and distressed whispers that followed him around whenever he came back from a mission unharmed? It was because no one in Nudist Beach was very subtle.

Really. The name should have been the first hint. He was really hanging out with the wrong crowd.

(Not that there were any _good_ crowds, nowadays. Not like he really disliked it here. He just sort of wished it was… maybe a little more subtle. He would have been happy being the most blunt person in a room, again. He would also have been happy being the most naked person in the room. By which he meant, he would have been happy wearing his usual clothes, and everyone else _covering the fuck up._ )

At least Tsumugu had his story straight. It wasn’t like his skillset was suspicious for someone with his background. Military Elite? Check. Field medic and EMT training? Check. Healthy dose of major trauma? Eh, he was turning out okay.

Aikuro had no such excuse.

“How do you know how to hotwire a helicopter?” Tsumugu asked, believing it to be a very reasonable question. “I mean, a car I could understand, _maybe_ , but this?”

He gestured to the chaos around them, consisting of one devastated city block, multiple REVOCs helicopters circling the skies with spotlights, and a single helicopter that had landed in order to deploy ground troops, who were dispatched before they could even be _dispatched_. Tsumugu had shoved the unconscious bodies under a nearby wooden stair, where they wouldn’t be spotted for some time. By the time he returned to the newly-abandoned chopper, he found Aikuro crouched in front of the control module, playing with wires that were definitely not supposed to be outside the control module.

“Well, what do you suggest I do?” Aikuro said, his voice carrying no heat. He wasn’t even looking towards Tsumugu as he continued to fiddle with the wires.

Tsumugu scoffed. “I don’t know, steal the keys, like a _normal_ person?”

Aikuro still wasn’t looking at him “Do you know how to fly a helicopter, Tsumugu?”

“I’m kinda a _ground based guy_ , if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Then you don’t get a say in how I steal my helicopters.”

“You say that like this is a regular thing!”

Aikuro finally turned his head. He smiled widely once, unblinking, with the same sort of wild-eyed look he had after five days of no sleep and the number of cups of coffee he’d ingested reached double digits.

It was not the sort of look Tsumugu ever wanted to see in a combat zone. Even if he knew Aikuro was just trying to psyche him out. Aikuro was succeeding.

“…just finish hotwiring your stupid helicopter.”

Aikuro laughed and went back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (i'm not giving up on these two.)


End file.
